2006 Trip to Flinders Ranges, etc

OK - so here's the first of my blog entries here on exploroz. Hopefully someone will find something interesting, maybe even useful, in the following. It was actually written a while ago for another forum I'm heavily involved in but it's just as relevant here.






The trip covered from Sydney to Hattah-Kylkyne National Park (just out of Mildura) through Adelaide to the Flinders Ranges (Wilpena) and then back to Sydney via Broken Hill and Dubbo - plus a heap of trekking about within these areas ;)



If you're interested, you can see more pics from the trip here:
Link to online photo gallery of the trip




Anyway, enough with the blurb, here's the story as I wrote back in 2006 - hope you enjoy :)



“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!”
Dorothea Mackellar
(1885 - 1968)

You know the words – it’s a poem that over the years has become a symbol of Australia as strong as the flag, boxing kangaroo and – dare I say it – “Waltzing Matilda”. It’s more than just words though – it describes a feeling, a way of life, and a place just needing to be explored.

Needing? Yes, this is a land just screaming to be discovered. This is no haven for day-tripper express type vacationers, it has to be lived – a place where a single servo sits on the side of the road, an hour to the west, and an hour to the east, of the nearest town. It’s harsh, but also incredibly welcoming. It reminds you how small, as a species, we are in this massive place - but at the same time, it shows how we have had an undeniable impact on the world we live in.

No, this wasn’t to be a trip into the never never – the famous Australian Desert Outback. This is Accessible Outback – the sort of country that a pretty standard vehicle can visit. OK, it takes a hell of a long time to get there, but getting there is half the fun!


Unusually for me, this trip came together with only a couple of months of thought. Easter 2006 saw an alignment of school holidays in NSW with South Australia. I have a brother in Adelaide – he loves going camping with his two kids (well ok, teenagers) and those who know me well will tell you I don’t need much excuse to go for a long drive!

So the plan hatched – I’d meet my brother a little over half way for Easter, then we’d continue onto the Flinders Ranges and then I’d drive all the way back again – just me and Little Sheepie (Lucas, my 10 year old son). It would be 18 days away, and the plan was to cover around 4,500 to 5,000km – it turned out to be 5,728km, a ‘little’ over budget. It was a trip that has changed my outlook on travel for ever, one that has sparked a bigger love affair with the country than I thought I could have. This place, once it gets it’s grip on you, never lets go – I can’t wait to go back!

This is the story of that trip. My idea in sharing it is that it may encourage the more adventurous amongst you to consider having a closer look at this amazing country. It’s also a little about putting down some of the memories of the places we visited before those memories become too vague – as much for Lucas’ future benefit as mine – at least I hope so anyway ?



Days 1 & 2 - Sydney to Hattah-Kylkyne National Park

Thursday 13th April 2006 (the day before Good Friday) saw us all ready to leave. A little later than I’d wanted, but we were on the way! The car probably couldn’t have held too much more gear. I have a rather bad habit of taking too much on a trip, and this was no exception!

There’s not a lot I want to say about this part of the trip, as if I go into too much detail here, you’ll still be reading in a month’s time (well – you would probably give up before then, in which case there’s really no use me writing it!). One thing I do want to mention though was a lesson in how things can go very, very wrong on a trip in Australia – and this was on the first day!

About 20 minutes south of Goulburn we came across a couple I really felt for – their small truck was parked a little further up the road from where they were standing, burning! Yes, smoke everywhere – they told me they’d called emergency services about ten minutes before I got there. While we stood there talking (it was too late for the tiny extinguisher I grabbed out of my car to do any good for them) the truck gradually got more and more engulfed. By the time a police car turned up the tyres were blowing out, and flames had full control of the destiny of their truck load of furniture! By the time I left them, there was still no sign of any other help. I really feel for these people, and hope all is well for them now.

Now this was only 20 minutes or so from a fairly major town – where we were going there wouldn’t be any hope of mobile phone service, let-alone a quick visit from the local Fire Brigade!

That night we set up the small tent in a caravan park in Narrandera. Yes, the small tent – I brought along two tents, as the big one is too big for just one night, but the small one is too small for more than one night!

Next day we traversed the Hay Plains. These first two days were all about getting to our first stop, we didn’t spend any time looking around, it was just drive, drive, drive – although I made sure I wasn’t pushing too hard, as I was obviously the only driver.

Late in the day we finally caught up with my brother and set up camp on the banks of the River Murray, in the Murray Rivers Reserve – just south of Mildura, and next to Hattah-Kylkyne National Park. Our trip was now properly underway ?


Days 3 & 4 - Hattah-Kulkyne National Park and Murray Sunset National Park

In real contrast to the Hay Plains and the Riverina Countryside now surrounding us, these two National Parks are true wilderness areas – each with several very distinct varieties of natural habitat. One of the highlights of the trip (already!), these parks are magic - and being on the doorstep of Mildura, you don't have to go fully bush to experience them!

Hattah-Kulkyne National Park covers 48,000 hectares of Riverside and Mallee country. We spent the better part of Easter Saturday exploring this park – our first taste of what I’ll call ‘light 4wd’. While parts were soft sand, nothing really challenged our cars – I have a Subaru Forrester, my brother has a Ford Explorer (both medium clearance all wheel drives rather than the full-on 4wd’s you need to go into the desert).

The next day, we ventured into Murray Sunset National Park - Victoria's second biggest National Park, at 6330 km². Only established as a National Park in 1991, this area has a long post-settlement history as a source of salt from 1916 to 1975, and a much longer history before European Settlement. We spent all day here, entering quite early in the morning, and not finding our way out until late afternoon. From Pink Lakes through varying wilderness areas, from near barren sand through tussock (mallee) to quite heavy bush. Mostly, the driving surface was sand - quite soft at times, although again we had no problems negotiating the tracks.

The salt lakes here go bright pink during the summer - and even when we were there they were an interesting (albeit pale) shade of pink. There wasn't much water in the lakes, which is not surprising given the drought we're all in at the moment! What water there was served as an almost cruel taunt - this was water that would not have been any use to the early explorers, and in this place you started to really get a feel for the size of Australia's wild areas.

Like Hattah-Kylkyne the day before, the sand here ranged from the famous Australian Red to a beachy, light tan colour. We came across a couple of other groups, both headed in the opposite direction to what we were, so once past them we pretty much had the day to ourselves. Almost at the end of the day, we came across our first sign (other than the couple of groups, and a few signs here and there) of civilisation - well, sort of! A relic from the days of salt mining still stands in the middle of nowhere - a bit like a scene from Mad Max, a silo complex is slowly giving way to the elements. It provided a bit of interest to the kids for a while, and a challenging subject to the photographers.


Day 5 - Hattah-Kylkyne to Adelaide

So that was Easter - the first stage of the holiday over already! This weekend was as much about getting ourselves sorted before going into the Flinders Ranges as about just getting a different sort of outlook to the rest of the trip. It was a good introduction to the trip, and allowed Lucas to get more acquainted with his cousins, whom he’d only met twice before.

Our only really wet day of the whole trip, the weather between our campsite and Adelaide was a shocker! Luckily, both camps were struck before the weather set in - but we had solid rain for most of the way from here to Adelaide. It wasn't a particularly pleasent trip, but given this was the only day to have so much rain, I can't complain. The roads were good right through here, following the Ouyen Highway almost due west to the South Australian border and still further west to Tailem Bend, before heading back up a bit into Adelaide and a well deserved hot shower!


Day 6 - Adelaide

Just a quick stop in one of my favourite cities, just enough time to catch up on some washing and grocery shopping. We also managed to catch up with a couple of friends for dinner at Glenelg, a very enjoyable experience.


Days 7 & 8 - Adelaide to Port Augusta to Flinders Ranges

Now to pack the car again! Amazingly, we managed to get everything back into the car and off we set to Port Augusta. We didn't take the route I had intended for two reasons - we were a little lazy with getting going, and then when we did get going, we took a lot more time getting there than I'd thought it would. This wasn't because my times were out, but because I kept stopping to look at the views! It's a great little drive up to Port Augusta, along the coastal side of the Southern Flinders Ranges. Highlights here included the jetty at Port Germein (1.5km long) and the large power stations at Port Augusta.

From Port Augusta, a short morning drive took us through to Quorn - a railway town from the early days of railway in Australia. This used to be the major hub for railway going east/west and north/south through the heart of Australia. Many years have now passed since these days, but Quorn hangs on to it's heritage with the Pichi Richi Railway - an experience (like many on this trip) well worth the miles to get there.
Pichi Richi railway takes you on a genuine ride back in time along the original tracks of the old narrow-gauge Ghan. If you're in the area, make sure you take the time to get on this, it really is worth it.

From Quorn, the trip through to our campsite took us past several farmhouse ruins from the days when this country held more sheep than it could really handle. There is also a site with some Aboriginal rock paintings, which was an interesting insight into the pre-history of the region.

We set up camp in the grounds of Rawnsley Park Station - on the southern edge of Wilpena Pound. This is a large sheep station which has transformed itself into a campground/caravan park/ecostay accommodation spot. We found a spot away from the main area, so we were pretty much on our own – nice and quiet ?


Days 9 through 12 – The Flinders Ranges

We’re now halfway through the trip. Remember at the beginning of this article I said we did a little more than the budgeted km’s? Well here’s the reason – we did over 1,000km just touring around the Flinders Ranges over these 4 days! Every bit of this touring was on roads and tracks that pretty much any reasonable car could handle – that’s one of the beauties of the Flinders, the routes are all in really good condition. Sure, most of this was on dirt/gravel, but it was all well maintained – whether this is the case after bad weather is probably a different story (there’s a heap of river and creek crossings, all dry when we went through).
They had had a fair amount of rain here in the week leading up to our arrival, so that explained why the countryside wasn’t quite as dry looking as we expected. Scratch below the surface and you could see it was dry though – very dry. This is certainly not sheep country – even if the early settlers thought it would be ideal (hence the number of ruins scattered around the place!).

My brother and his kids had caught up with us again at Quorn the day before (they’d stayed in Adelaide an extra day to what we did). He’d been up this way once before, but had not really spent a huge amount of time looking around – so was looking forward to getting out and about again!

Day 9 saw us driving the loop from Rawnsley Park down and across on the Moralana Scenic Drive (a great little drive cutting through one of the sheep stations still running in this area), further down to Hawker, and back up to Rawnsley Park. Some great views of the ranges are along this route, and we found it really enjoyable – and an easy going introduction to the area. Total distance for today? 236km!

The next day was a big one – the plan was to head up past Wilpena Pound, through Brachina Gorge then further up to Leigh Creek before heading back down through Parachilna Gorge and Blinman before heading back to camp. Today’s trip ended up being 405km – with countryside changing dramatically between spectacular gorges and dry, flat, tussock outback. The gorges really are something else – and the huge differences in landscape were a real eye opener.

Mostly metal roads, but again in really good condition. The road up to Leigh Creek is sealed all the way – a long way up just to come back down again, but it’s worth it just to see the huge size of the hole we have cut into the Earth here (Leigh Creek has one of the bigger open cast coal mines in Australia, if not the biggest –it supplies coal to the big power station back at Port Augusta which in turn supplies a fair portion of South Australia’s power needs).


On the 11th day, we needed a break from driving! We decided to do two things – a 40-minute scenic flight (the guys at Rawnsley Park will organise this for you – there’s a few options for flights in this area), and then take in a bit of Wilpena Pound itself. The really cool thing about the flight was it covered most of the area we’d been driving through the day before, so we got a very different view of the landscape we’d already seen.

Wilpena Pound itself is a fairly unique natural occurance, commonly confused as a meteor crater. It is in fact a couple of range formations which together form close to a u-shaped enclosure which the early Europeans saw as similar to a ‘pound’ which they used to keep animals in. The only way to explore the inside of this area is by walking. It’s times like these that you wished you were a hell of a lot fitter than you are! We went for a bit of a walk, which (other than making me feel like I was ready to die) took us to yet another spectacular view over part of the valley within the pound.

Our final day with my brother saw another long drive, covering 227km this time, heading north-east to Mount Chambers – towering a majestic 433mtrs! Yeah, not much – but in this part of the country, and sort of height looks impressive.




All in all, the Flinders Ranges are an amazing – and easy – place to visit, despite the distances involved.


Days 13 & 14 – Flinders Ranges to Broken Hill

25th April (Anzac Day) saw us packing up the tent and on the road yet again – this time through to Broken Hill. We’d intended to be there for Anzac Day services, but instead stayed an extra day in the Flinders Ranges. The road to Broken Hill is long – 540km to be exact. A highlight along here was being passed by the Indian Pacific train – yes, passed! I’d noticed it coming up on us in the rear vision mirror and stopped to get a photo. Couldn’t catch up to it again!
Broken Hill is a place I really want to get back to and spend some time. I’d totally recommend the Delprats Underground Mine tour – this is right in the middle of town, and takes you underground for 2 hours. Not running anymore, this is more an historic mine site, and gives a great feeling for what miners used to go through. We went on this tour the day after the Beaconsfield accident – so it was rather strange and spooky being underground for so long!

While in Broken Hill we also went for a drive out to Silverton – this is one of the spots the Mad Max films were made, and a replica of the Mad Max car still stands at the Silverton Pub. This place has a real outback feel to it, complete with red sand, and incredibly flat plains.


Day 15 – Broken Hill to Dubbo

This day deserves a special mention, as it was by far the longest day on the road – some 760 km, and 10 hours in the car (including a couple of stops). It’s along this route that the servo I made mention of in my introduction sits – literally 100km’s of road between it and the nearest town in either direction. There’s several rest areas along the way – if ever you’re doing this trip, make sure you make good use of these areas, they’re a godsend!


Days 16 & 17 – Dubbo to Bathurst

Dubbo was a special stop for us, and marked the return to civalisation – well, sort of! We overnighted on the Friday night (our second night in Dubbo) at the Western Plains Zoo, an experience I would recommend everyone do at least once. The Zoo provides the tents, you just provide the sleeping gear (which really wasn’t a problem for us as we had all the gear with us already). Dinner, supper and breakfast are all included, along with a private tour with a guide both after dark, and at first light in the morning.

From Dubbo we detoured further away from Sydney a little to visit “The Dish” at Parkes. After seeing this in the movie, it was pretty cool to see it for real. I have a fascination with these telescopes, and really enjoyed seeing and reading about it.
Of course, once you’re down in this area of NSW you have to go through Bathurst to get back to Sydney. And of course, when visiting Bathurst, what does one have to do? A lap around the famous Mount Panorama! Well, ok, three laps – one the wrong way around just because I could ;) The Motor Racing Museum here at the racetrack was also well worth having a look at.


Day 18 – Bathurst to HOME!

April 30 was our final day on the road! After sneaking back to the racetrack for one last visit (which couldn’t be a full lap as there was some inconsiderate car club doing a hill climb or something on part of it)! It was the “home, James” – a quick flick over the Blue Mountains and back into the real world.


The real world? I’m not so sure about what that is anymore. Surely the real world isn’t all about 40+ hour weeks and what feels to be as many hours a week crawling along in peak hour traffic. No – it’s not about that. You put up with all of that so you can experience the real world. The world is out there (pointing west) – “go west, young man, go west”.

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